Alleged Canadian boiler room mastermind busted in Bangkok

Alleged Canadian boiler room mastermind busted in Bangkok

The Canadian said to be behind a $140M penny stock fraud and his co-conspirator have been arrested in Thailand and are facing extradition to the US for trial.

Sandy Winick, whom authorities allege masterminded fraudulent schemes across at least 35 countries, was arrested in Bangkok along with fellow Canadian co-conspirator Gregory Curry. The indictment and arrests were announced by Loretta Lynch, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and George Venizelos, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office.

“The defendants Sandy Winick and Gregory Curry used our securities markets as a platform from which to run elaborate fraudulent schemes to victimize tens of thousands of unsuspecting investors across the globe,” said Lynch.

Winick is charged as the lead defendant in two separate but interrelated schemes. According to the indictment, the defendants first engaged in an international ‘pump and dump’ scheme during which they fraudulently ‘pumped up’ the share price of worthless penny stocks and then ‘dumped’ billions of shares of those stocks by unloading them on unsuspecting victim investors across the globe.

To uncover the international aspects of the scheme and gather evidence, the FBI used wiretaps in the US and undercover agents in foreign countries.

These arrests mark the latest successful chapter in an effort to address fraud in the over the counter securities markets. On August 13, the FBI arrested six men in New York, Arizona, New Jersey, Florida and California, while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested a seventh man on a provisional arrest warrant in Ontario, for engaging in this same international fraud conspiracy that spanned the globe from North America to Europe and Asia.